As we remember June 12

It will be significant for political leaders with familiarity with that date in the country’s evolution to create space for recalling the unfinished business of June 12 struggle for democracy.

The interest of today’s piece is to take advantage of being a ‘participant observer’ in creation and propagation of major themes of the struggle for de-militarization of Nigeria’s polity between 1993 and 1998, when General Abdusalaam Abubakar kicked off the famous transition to democracy after the death of Sani Abacha, who supplanted General Ibrahim Babangida as the antagonist of June 12 and of MKO Abiola, the protagonist of the June 12 moment in the country’s political history.

Given the attention that party politics has given to people in power, especially in the Yoruba region since 1999, it is natural that many of those ruling or governing the region are going to be invited to grace June 12 events across the region. Knowing that themes of fighting corruption, improving national security, and ending unanticipated recession have seized mass communication space in the country, it will not be surprising if such themes do not eclipse the unfinished business of June 12.

As this page had observed many years since 1999 about June 12 and its memorialisation, only one of three major objectives of June was achieved before the struggle yielded space for transition to democracy. It will be significant for political leaders with familiarity with that date in the country’s evolution to create space for recalling the unfinished business of June 12 struggle for democracy. The gravity of the threat to stability and development in post-military Nigeria requires that those charged to anchor events to mark the day do not use the opportunity to reiterate the ruling party’s bogey that this is not the right time to reform Nigeria. Further, the issue of importance now may not be how many federal institutions and monuments should be named after Abiola and whether June 12 should be made a national holiday from Abeokuta to Abuja and KauraNamoda. As important as all these may be for enhancing the symbolism of June 12 and Abiola’s self-sacrifice for democracy, special attention needs to be drawn to outstanding projects of the June 12 struggle.

Two major issues de-emphasised by both the midwife for delivery of electoral democracy and many of our own people with overflowing optimism about election without a new constitution are Restructuring and De-militarisation of the polity. Many of the NADECO vanguards for democratisation through restoration of Abiola’s presidential mandate who assured citizens in the Southwest in 1998 that once “our people are elected to govern our region all our problems would be over,” must now know how risky it is to be blessed with an unduly credulous followers.

It is no exaggeration that even 18 years into a post-military governance, the problems that created June 12 struggle are still with the country. Many people would even say that the problems have gotten worse. The hypnotic power at the disposal of central government at the expense of subnational governments that made it necessary for various sections of the country to cry marginalisation and domination is still growing. Others would even say that federal power had gotten more maddening, to the extent that ensuring that each section to which federal power has rotated would do virtually anything to keep it, even if it includes putting national security at risk. For example, professional keepers of power for specific regions pushed Nigeria into crisis when President UmaruYar’Adua died and until the country was rescued by Doctrine of Necessity. By falling sick like other human beings, President Buhari’s health almost became, if it were not for the man’s integrity, another fertile ground for professional custodians of power for their preferred region. Even President Obasanjo from the Southwest is still being cited as choosing to bend the constitution in the direction of third term, thus overheating an already heated polity.

Those who wanted to hold federal power in trust for their nationality or region in both the North and South again stretched the cord of unity almost to a breaking point, first over 2011 presidential election and later over 2015 election. The South-south with the support of the Southeast also felt cheated that the power that they believed should belong to that region had been snatched for the Northwest through the election of President Mohammadu Buhari. As tension mounted over resource control or allocation of more revenue to oil-producing areas of the Niger Delta, the country’s leaders resorted to adoption of palliatives: Amnesty Programme for some of the most vociferous militants and establishment of some money-guzzling bureaucracies to pacify the Niger Delta. Such palliatives were considered more profitable for and by those in power at the centre to facing the issue of equitable resource control or share, in the name of even development.

Disempowerment of states remains a feature of the cosmetic federalism bequeathed by the military at the point of its exit from power through the 1999 Constitution. Even state governors got used to governance as ability to get to Abuja at the right time to collect funds to develop their states. Just like the central government, state governments felt no obligation to citizens who they see as having no stake by way of tax in the political enterprise. Despite the ideas generated by June 12 about the need to return to federalism and productive economy, leaders in central and state governments got used to living off and ruling with funds from petroleum and gas. Many of such leaders looked away from restructuring as they saw it as another threat to access to keep and grow power for themselves at the state level while preparing to move to the centre to become senators or ministers under a system that does not seem to have the right architecture to improve standard of living of citizens.

Nigeria appears more divided now than ever, except on the eve of the civil war. The reasons should not be hard to find. Trauma of repressed frustration in various parts of the country is coming to the surface and causing tension in various parts of the country. Boko Haram destabilised the country, especially the Northeast for many years. Even after it has been visibly emasculated, it is still killing innocent citizens in its primary region of operation. And it is not just those calling for Biafra that are threatening national security.

Apart from Boko Haram, farmers and herdsmen who used to live together in harmony before the civil war are now at each other’s throat, to the extent that farmers are abandoning their ancestral homes for fear of being killed by nomadic cattle producers. Militants in the Niger Delta still express open frustration about what they see as lack of equity in the sharing of proceeds from oil that destroys the environment in the Niger Delta. Factions of organisations in search of independence for Biafra are seizing the airwaves and even ordering citizens in the Southeast to boycott normal business with ease. Self-determination groups in the Southwest multiply by the day. The only section of the country that was relatively free of agitation apart from farmers/herdsmen conflict until a few days ago is the core North. This also has become the epicentre of Hate speech and Action in the country.

After 18 years of celebration of Democracy Day, youth organisations are giving deadlines to Igbos to vacate the 19 states of the North or face extermination. Despite assurances from cultural and political leaders of the North and even the United Nations, there are reports that some Igbo parents have already started to send their wives and children home to Igboland, should the threat of Igbo extermination materialise. Nigeria looks in 2017 as much of a failing state as it did in the mid-1960s and early1990s. And this may not have anything to do with President Buhari. He was elected as a man of impeccable integrity to fight corruption and Boko Haram, and make needed changes. But the presidency of Buhari is bringing back to the fore importance of relationship between good leadership and good structure to good governance in a federal system that most Nigerians perceive this to be.

A clinical description of tension in the country 24 years after June 12 crisis would show to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear that Nigeria needs fixing. Those who prefer to play the ostrich have the right to do so. But those privileged to anchor June 12 celebration tomorrow must not shy from coming to grips with the challenge of living in a big edifice that houses many families. Some myopic inmates who occupy the biggest room may think that nothing needs to be done to strengthen the structure of the house in the belief that others may take such intervention as an opportunity to reduce their space in the big house. But those who do not want the house to implode have a duty to remember what Chief Awolowo said about seventy years ago: “If a country is bi-lingual or multi-lingual, the constitution must be Federal…. Any experiment with a unitary constitution in a multilingual country must fail, in the long run. I predict that every multi-lingual or multi-national country with a unitary constitution must either eventually have a federal constitution based on the principles which J have enunciated, or disintegrate, or be perennially afflicted with disharmony and instability.”